Holy moly, we have so much stuff to post today we may as well get started with a little eye candy. And by eye candy we do mean this truly unique Pectinia alcicornis which by chalice naming convention should be named the “Alien Eye Spiny Chalice” coral. Pectinia is an awesome group of coral which is really hardy, but also really aggressive. Everyone already knows to space their Galaxea but Pectinia has it’s own 6″+ sweeper tentacles that are significantly thicker than Galaxea. Furthermore, most Pectinia colonies have greatly reduced coloration making them hardly worth the real estate in a reef tank. That is not the case with the beautiful Alien Eye Spiny Chalice coral above which resides in a prominent placement of Vivid Aquarium’s double rainbow coral display tank.
Stand alone, the neon green coloration of the body, or yellow-orange color of the corallites would be enough to bring attention to this specimen. Together the colors of the Alien Eye Spiny Chalice come together to make a coral which is truly unique in color and shape. When this coral grows out to a large size and displays the full extent of a green branching chalice, it will be a truly glorious colony. Sure Vivid could make bank by selling frags of this coral to the highest bidders but we’d like to see a fragging moratorium on just this piece, so we can see what it does at a large size. We know that Vivid acquired this Pectinia strain from an individual who distributed frags to some other reefers. If anyone out there has a larger piece of the Alien Eye Spiny Chalice we’d love to see it. Follow the break for an example of afresh wild Pectinia colony we spied in England which was almost there with the yellow orange eyes. We made one of our companions buy it and hopefully it’ll color more in time.
